1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an equipment application calculating apparatus and a designing support method, involving application of parts in a part table of a product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In designing an apparatus such as an automobile having a complex structure and composed of a number of parts, the parts are managed by using a part table. Here, the part table is the table for managing parent parts, i.e., main parts constituting the automobile, and child parts, i.e., parts constituting each parent part, a number of each part, data peculiar to each part such as a design change history of the part, an assembling unit in a product, a usage state and the like.
The following conventional designing technique is known in which the specification of a product is determined, variations of the product are determined and then parts to be used are determined for each of them. That is, in this method, a database for a part table is produced, and parts are represented as a relational tree structure. The parts to be used for each of the product variations are directly determined from the part table.
It is composed of a variation code input system and a part application input system. Here, the variation code input system sets identifiers (variation codes) for the number of the product variations. The part application input system inputs a part number, a kind code of the part number and the number of parts to the variation code.
A designer sets the variation code for the number of the product variation using the variation code input system. A designer of a part directly inputs the application of parts of the highest level (level 1) to each variation code using the part application input system. At this time, the designer inputs the application of the part while giving a difference to the part as necessary, in accordance with the difference in the product resulting from the variation. Consequently, a set of the parts in the level 1 is established for each product variation.
As a result, the parts for one kind of a product can be taken out by extracting all of the parts in the level 1 applied to a certain variation code and the lower level parts linked to the parts in the level 1.
In the above-mentioned technique, the confirmation of the difference in specification between the original product and the variation is entrusted to the designer. The will of the designer that parts of what part numbers are set for a variation of what specification is not recorded as data. Thus, an automatic input check could not be carried out. For this reason, the application of the parts needs to be manually carried out in case of an occurrence of an application miss, the increase or decrease of the product variations in relation to a change of a product specification, the change of an optional specification and the like. Therefore, it is difficult to follow the change of the product specification quickly and precisely.
Conventionally, the number of the combinations of options is hundreds of millions. Thus, the typical variations of the product are often managed in only the combinations of basic equipments.
In this case, nevertheless, the number of the variations is 1,000 or more. Thus, it is difficult to manually carry out the calculation quickly and accurately. Also, only the management of the typical variations is carried out. Therefore, a part of a different option is registered for a certain variation. Therefore, there is a problem that the parts corresponding to one kind of a product in which an optional equipment is used cannot be automatically extracted.
A technique is desired that can protect against a miss in the application of the parts. Also, a technique is desired that can automatically update the application of parts to generation of a new variation. Also, a technique is desired that can carry out a part search using an option specification part as a key. Moreover, a technique is desired that can manage all of the variations of products.